Editor's Corner

Maxine Kumin, Mites to Mastodons, children’s poems: A fascinating cornucopia of poems that exudes whimsical affection for all the creatures in our kingdom. Illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski. (Houghton Mifflin)

Paul Muldoon, Horse Latitudes, poems: This magnificent new collection presents us with fields of battle and fields of debate in which we often seem to be at a standstill. (FSG)

Gail Mazur, Zeppo’s First Wife, poems: This splendid collection of new and selected works draws on Mazur’s four previous books, showcasing her poetic achievements and wry meditations on the everyday. (Chicago)

Mark Strand, Man and Camel, poems: Strand’s remarkable eleventh collection is a toast to life’s transience, abiding beauty, and the meaning in the sound of language. (Knopf)

Robert Pinsky, The Life of David, nonfiction: Pinsky teases apart the many strands of David’s story in this vibrant  retelling, which includes a wealth of legend as well as scripture. (Schocken)

Madison Smartt Bell, Toussaint Louverture, a biography: A masterful portrait of the man who led the first—and only—successful slave revolution in history. (Pantheon)

Chase Twichell, Dog Language, poems: Twichell’s dazzling poems capture the complex emotions and challenges of family and aging, without ever reducing them to cliché or sentiment. (Copper Canyon)

James Carroll, House of War, nonfiction: Carroll draws on rich personal experience as well as exhaustive research to produce an intimate, searing, and emotional history of “the Building” known as the Pentagon. (Houghton Mifflin)

Madeline DeFrees, Spectral Waves, poems: Feisty and haunting, the poems in DeFrees’s tenth collection range from sonnets about Elvis to lyrics about cataracts, birds, and the plants in her well-tended garden. (Copper Canyon)